Are Ebooks Effective Ways To Start Selling Affiliate Products? (Part 2)

Ebooks and their ability to start selling affiliate products has been around for a while. They are effective at something called:

-preselling.

The idea of warming up a cold prospect to someone more inclined to "listen" to what you have to say. Part 1 of this article is here and is an overview of what we are going to delve into now.

However. What almost all preselling affiliate ebooks have got wrong is the following:

You want the person to buy what you are selling.

You are coming at it from a "me" perspective rather than a "you" perspective. You can really tell the difference between both types

Me and You selling

Most people- yourself included, go around on the internet to do something. You always go around to see "what is in it for me". regardless of where you go. You either want to have fun or listen to some cool stuff (Youtube videos). Or you want to see how something can make you better or take away a "pain". Everything we do, in the background, we do for us.

When you create an ebook with the sole intention of someone buying from you- to sell affiliate products, you want them to buy. So you fill the ebook about cool the product is, how well it is made and how cheap it is.

When you "you" sell, your ebook gets created differently.

You are more concerned about what the ebook and product can do for the person looking through it. Are there any negatives to the product, are here any other products out there that are similar but just don't offer what your product has?

How on earth can it help the person who is looking for "me".

Technically, you are not trying to sell anything. The 4 ways how selling affiliate products should work

To sell affiliate products through an ebook you have to learn one distinct lesson.

You are not trying to sell anything.

That is the job of the sales page (remember marketing and sales are really different)

Your job?

Is to get the person- who already has an interest and in what you saying, to look at the sales page.

When you look at it that way then you can see the job becomes a little bit easier.

All you need to do is:

find someone who is interested in what you have to offer
show them that you know what you are talking about and can hit those pain/ pleasure points
show them the benefits
show them how to find the solution.

Ebook pre-preselling

Free ebooks are very difficult to promote because of the free nature. However they can be very useful when you pre-sell even the ebook on a webpage. So, you have to list and paint a picture of how the ebook is going to help. Remember that a benefit is much better than a feature. The difference?

A tried and true example:

Windshield wipers are there to remove dirt and rain from the car screen. That is their feature- that is what they do.

But windshield wipers also have a benefit. To keep you and your family safe while driving home on a stormy night so that you can have crystal clear vision. That is their benefit.

Every product has a benefit, therefore your ebook- which is also a product, has a benefit. What it can do for the reader. This goes on your promotion page for your free ebook, even though it is free Failure to figure this out reduces in minimal downloads.

As a side note. This also plays to why people have low sign ups to their newsletters. Very few newsletter creators make a reason to why people should sign up- there are no benefits for long term sign ups. Compared to short term which features some freebie.

Try not to sell?

Sometimes free ebooks can be used not to sell anything. It is a worthy idea, but it can be used to promote an idea/ theory that you have without any affiliate links within.

This then states to the reader that maybe, just maybe the links that do get placed within the ebook are actually worthy of my attention.

Also it is a good idea to allow the reader to jump around and not feel ebook-locked. The thought of linking away from the book (if they are online) usually starts with skepticism. Linking to cool content/ video also prepares the person that not all links are bad. It also gets them used to jumping around away from the ebook- which is a must.

Jumping to your Youtube videos, your "pre-selling" affiliate sales page (with Facebook comments at the bottom) keeps the "sale" with you. It also shows that you have different ways to interact and to promote your affiliate product. Pre-selling something and then seeing it being used on a video is proof. Reading the comments and you answering them is social proof.

The more cool quality products that you offer for free the more trust that will increase to you. Trust is going to be the main issue that you will have to overcome. Therefore you need to position yourself as a trust worthy source. The whole idea- where most people forget is that "why should I trust you and not someone else?"

Solo products

Ebooks are not catalogues. Too much jumping off your ebook is not going to be helpful. So most ebooks that are good at selling affiliate products tend to be hyper focused upon that one sole item. It also came from an pre-sales page of specificity. One links into the other.

Then your ebook should be discussing the benefits of the product, giving examples and linking to an appropriate specific video of yours. For example, if you want to sell some callus removal kit then the best way is the talk about how bad callus can be. Explaining the causes, the complications. You would then have links within your ebook at various section that suggest:

the best natural hard skin removers
the best files rated by average customer reviews
stylish wooden files
files that celebrities use to reduce down their bad feet

If you know the topic then placing in those links at various intervals will be quite easy. Also some of those links go to roughly the same page. And those pages would list and give more valuable information about that specific title. All the affiliate links from those pages flow into your vendor.

Also you have to track those links within your ebook. Which ones are people clicking on more than the rest.

You might find that 99% click on the "celebrity" link. This then allows you to create a pre-sales page honed in on celebrety hard skin removers/ pedicure-care- increasing the warmth of the viewer and increasing your chance of a conversion.

As a side note. I would also contemplate having the ebook and then converting it to a webpage and see how that converts.

Additional content ebooks?

This seems to have been under used. it is the additional ebook...ebook.

When you start to read content on a regular basis you will find that, in most cases, things are missing. Or the ebook could have done a better job at doing XY or Z.

This is also the reason why businesses are created- they are scratching an itch that people have got.

Ebooks become more valuable when they add new content or make the content more palatable.

So you might find that a product that you have been using is great but could actually be a bit better.

Write about it. Really go for it. Create not the product again but to add to it. This does a few things:

automatically causes you to have some authority. You have used the product, people can see it and they understand the info that you are discussing
automatically generates an audience and potential followers by association
shows you that the product has got an audience in the first place

This was famously found in the "$100 Startup" by Chris Guillebeau with the $120k Evernote ebook created by Brett Kelly. Bret found that there wasn't an clear instructional ebook for Evernote. So he created one and made a super job at it. It sold well, like really well :)

There are some tiny small prints though:

he was the first to do this for an English speaking Evernote resource
the content was huge- complete over delivery
the amount of money that the audience had was possibly high and thus a higher priced ebook ($25) was going to sell than a $2.95 one
he was quick to market

So, can you sell affiliate products through ebooks?

Yes you can, but they might not be that effective. As times change people want more trust. That is what your ebook is going to do.

Your ebook will build trust and then funnel people to a pre-sell page listing benefits (rather than features). I did one a while ago and the page was huge. Full of information. It showed people a process that they could do. It showed what to expect. Then gently, if people wanted to know more, they could click on the link and buy the product.

It was successful because I gave a lot first and then promoted something if people wanted to know more. Some would want more, others would just be curious. Then that is the job of the sales page- to create the sale.

Be careful though. Amazon Associates doesn't like affiliate links within ebooks.

More info on affiliate news. articles can be found on the Jasonera blog.